With diversification of electronics, a requirement for wearable devices (WD) gradually increases. Because a WD has a relatively small battery capacity and a relatively low radio frequency capability, when the WD wants to connect to a network side device for data transmission, a communications device with a relatively high radio frequency capability, for example, user equipment (UE) with a relatively high radio frequency capability may be used as a relay node to assist the WD with the connection to the network side device for data transmission, so as to reduce power consumption of the WD.
When the WD is in an idle mode, if the network side device needs to send data to the WD, the network side device needs to page the UE connected to the WD, and the UE pages the WD at a paging moment of the WD. Currently, a solution for how the UE pages the WD has not been disclosed. Only a solution in which the network side device pages the UE is disclosed, that is, a paging occasion of the UE is calculated by using an international mobile subscriber identity (IMS) of the UE according to a discontinuous reception (DRX) mechanism, and then a paging message is sent to the UE on the paging occasion, so as to page the UE.
It is assumed that the UE pages, in a manner in which the network side device pages the UE, a plurality of WDs that transmit data to the network side device by using the UE. That is, the UE calculates paging occasions for the WDs according to IMSIs of the WDs. Because different WDs may have different IMSIs, the UE may need to page the plurality of WDs on different paging occasions, that is, the UE needs to occupy a relatively large quantity of network resources to page the WDs, thereby affecting normal service transmission of the UE.